OS 6 Finally revealed! And man is it a beauty!

Boy Genius Reports slapped the BlackBerry community upside the face this morning with some incredible news. Yes, the much rumored OS 6 has finally been let out of the bag. And all I can say is, WOW. This OS looks sexy! BGR got his hands on the OS from an AT&T source and got to play around with it on a touchscreen device. Yes, an AT&T touchscreen...but that's not the big story here. This OS has some awesome new features.

While the OS doesn't look to have changed drastically, it does have a more modern flare to it. The browser has been re-designed(yes sir, Webkit) and now has a built-in tab switcher.

The Media Player has also been re-designed with a more iPhone like look. It has the album artwork that you can flick across to get to want you want to listen to. I for one am very happy about this. The current media player looks very bland. This will be a welcomed change.

BGR also says that RIM has added system-wide kinetic scrolling with rubberbanding. This is great news as well because the OS should now feel more fluid throughout. There is also multi-touch system wide so we will now have pinch zooming.

There are a lot of improvements to this OS according to BGR. Better photos application, customizable homescreen pages, updated email inbox, modal popups with gestures and much more.

I am really excited about this OS. This might just be what is needed to win back some of the lost customers that jumped to Android and iPhone. But what really gets me anxious for this OS is the fact that RIM plans on releasing it this summer. This absolutely shows that RIM is serious about taking steps forward in the smartphone race. We should see the formal announcement from RIM at WES. I can't wait!

Storm 3 is gsm and CDMA versions, slider is also touchscreen there is slider 9800 and slider 9820 so could be either one or both, in a short time you'll see the S2 in one GSM (at leats). Carrier in the USPosted via mobile device

It is good to see the talk about the Storm 3...When I first read this, it was my first thought.

While my Storm 1 has only recently been a disappointment and I was unable to pick up the second version. When rumors of the 3rd gen started coming I got really excited.
Now with this news of 6.0....I am super psyched!!!

November is the norm for Storm releases it seems, I would be in heaven if it came out in the Summer!
But alas, it will probably be Fall...I can accept that.

Click the Like button to thank me. Retired Administrator--I never try anything, I just do it.....Wanna try me?--

OS6 looks to be the thing that will win my faith in RIM back. It seems to have addressed the specific things I felt were currently lacking. I love my new Storm2, but almost wished I had sprung for an android instead. Ill bet the new themes that come out are gonna be unfrickenbelievable! I'm wicked psyched!Posted via mobile device

after thinking about it, i got this conclusion, about at this same time last year we heard for the first time about os 5.0, was spotted at WES 2009 and then in june we saw the first leak os 5.0.0.90 for the Bold and Curve 8900, after you all know the story, so lets keep ours fingers crossed

BlackBerry OS 6.0 screenshots, details!

If youíre a BlackBerry fan, there is probably not a single thing you have been looking forward to more than what we have right here ó screenshots and full details of RIMís upcoming operating system, OS 6.0. One of our AT&T sources has not only showed us the brand new OS, but has also given us some screenshots that we could share. Since we have seen OS 6.0 in action first hand, we will break it down for you guys, along with all the other screenshots, after the break!

You can see the new browser that RIM has skinned up, complete with tab switching, new favorites, and multitouch. Yes, multitouch. The browser looks like itís coming along quite nicely, all WebKit!

Hereís the actual tab switcher view, with nice transparent overlay. No word on how many open tabs you can keep simultaneously.

Finally, a redone media player, and it doesnít look half bad, right? The navigation in this view is done by using your finger to browse the album art work and then touching the specific album cover to start playing.

Here is what we can tell you about OS 6.0 that we saw in actionÖ RIM has finally implemented system-wide kinetic scrolling with rubberbanding. This makes the experience a bit more fluid when scrolling through lists, web pages, emails, and the like. There is also multitouch system-wide, from the web browser to the photos application, and yes, pinch to zoom is in there.

Looking at the actual message inbox, things look a bit cleaner, and a bit more modern, but itís obviously not a huge departure from what we have now, just another evolutionary upgrade which is par for the course with RIM. But, we definitely do like the look of the new inbox. It also features larger thumbnails to the left of each message to identify the type of message (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and we even saw RSS feeds built right in which looked great. We canít describe this partÖ but the new inbox feels right. Itís not all work and dry, and itís not over the top with cheesy graphics or animations, rather a nice compromise of the two.

Something big for OS 6.0 is the homescreen. While we didnít see any sort of widget support, it appears RIM has made the homescreen completely customizable with pages. You can have your applications on the main page, then slide left or right to another page with different applications and browse that way. In the homescreen screenshot above, youíll see a sliding field towards the bottom, and you can slide that up, and reveal the first page of applications, and you can then slide that to show the different groups which correspond to the different homescreen page. Favorites, all, home, etc.

Another big thing for OS 6.0 is modal popups with gestures. If you tap and hold (obviously a touchscreen device is required), youíll get a 9 icon group centered on the screen which is basically a pretty context menu. For instance, you could be composing an email, and instead of pressing Menu + Send, you could tap and hold on the email, see the popup window, and hit the send icon there. Another use would be when emailing photos or videos from your device, just tap and hold on an item there, see the popup, and then just send the item. That way you donít have to deal with going through the normal menu options which has gotten convoluted with all the various social services/networks available.

The photos application we saw looks quite a bit like the iPhoneís layout, big tiled square photos that appear in thumbnail view with very small borders, that you can flick that list up or down to navigate. Pictures also appeared on screen instantly, not loading one by one by one until you give up. Once you tap a specific photo, youíll see the picture slide in from the right, sort of like the current animation now when navigating pictures on the BlackBerry. The usual top and bottom UI bars are still here, but if you tap once, just like the iPhone, that view will hide and youíll have a fullscreen shot of the picture youíre looking at. There was pinch to zoom on the touch screen device we saw (sorry, we canít comment on the device), but there was absolutely no fluidity when panning around photos. Thatís something a lot of manufacturers miss, but, itís obviously not the end of the world.

Composing an email looks to be a little bit more straight forward. The UI has nice, clean gradients and a very modern web 2.0-feel. Definitely refreshing. Thereís also universal search across the system on hereÖ If you havenít got the point yet, OS 6.0 looks to be a very clean and arguably sexy UI for the BlackBerry platform, letís just hope there are some under the hood changes as well. Our source says there are many changes we canít see.

In terms of a release timeframe, we are sure youíll be pleased as punch to find out that we have been told BlackBerry OS 6.0 will be in market in the June / July timeframe, 100%. I said on Twitter I thought RIM was announcing OS 6.0 at WES (not having heard that at the time), and it looks like I might have been right. RIM needs to knock this one out of the park, and youíll know weíll be rooting for them.

I have a bad feeling you are all going to bash me, but hear me out. I have to say it looks great but I am just not that impressed by it. I still have a storm 2 and the look of the UI is still soo similar and it appears they are not going to move off their older platform either, I was really hoping with the webkit and 6.0 to see BB move to something a lil different. And the screenshots to me looked a bit cluttered, of course it could have been the persons choosing to have that way. I guess before I can make a final decision i need to see a video of it running.. that will be either the straw that broke the camels back, or the fleeting shimmer of gold into the next chapter.

I have a bad feeling you are all going to bash me, but hear me out. I have to say it looks great but I am just not that impressed by it. I still have a storm 2 and the look of the UI is still soo similar and it appears they are not going to move off their older platform either, I was really hoping with the webkit and 6.0 to see BB move to something a lil different. And the screenshots to me looked a bit cluttered, of course it could have been the persons choosing to have that way. I guess before I can make a final decision i need to see a video of it running.. that will be either the straw that broke the camels back, or the fleeting shimmer of gold into the next chapter.

Bash you ?? You must be thinking you're on a different site !! This is ...and you know that bashing doesn"t happen here...:biglaugh:

Anyway...I also see a lot of similarities, but still think that the looks, along with the features make this something to definitely look forward to.